President Trump’s Kennedy Center plans are unclear, so far

0:00There's an interview I did last year that stuck in my mind. Okay, okay. It was with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who had stopped by NPR's tiny desk for a performance at a much smaller venue than he was used to. You're doing this concert in between shows at the Kennedy Center. I talked to him about his newest album.

0:22He plays a piano concerto by Aram Kacatorian, a prolific Armenian composer who wrote and played music while under Soviet rule. It was a time and a place that could be treacherous for artists. Kachetorian's work fell in and out of favor, depending on the whims of the regime. I think unless you were living there in those era, we just cannot understand what those composers had to go through. Sometimes they had to write things in a certain genre, otherwise they would be blacklisted. I asked Thibaudet whether composers like Kachetorian, working under an authoritarian government, could tell us anything about the relationship between music and politics.

0:58Music and politics should never get together. I think music is one of the few things that is, and art maybe in general, that should absolutely not touch politics. I mean, music is the only thing that is international. There's no language barrier. It should just bring peace, just bring happiness and beauty to humankind. Hours after that interview, President Trump announced that he was taking control of the Kennedy Center, the national venue for the performing arts in Washington. He purged the board, and the new board made him chairman. Politics was, in fact, running headlong into art at the very concert hall where Thibaudet was performing.

1:37We ended the woke political programming, and we're restoring the Kennedy Center as the premier venue for performing arts anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. In the wake of Trump's changes, a host of artists began to cancel scheduled Kennedy Center performances, especially after Trump added his name to the facade. The administration says it is the artists who are playing politics when they refuse to perform. President Trump also said this. They'll say Trump made it political, but I think if we make it our kind of political, we'll go up. Consider this. Trump now says he is shutting down the Kennedy Center to rebuild it as a, quote, new and spectacular entertainment complex.

2:17What does it mean when a president remakes a national cultural institution around his own vision of great American art and around himself?

2:29From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

2:40It's Consider This from NPR. President Trump wants to close the Kennedy Center for two years. The reason, he says, has to do with a massive renovation. I'm not ripping it down. I'll be using the steel. So we're using the structure. We're using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down. But when it's open, it'll be brand new and really beautiful. It'll be at the highest level. So what will the Kennedy Center look like, physically and artistically, after the president is finished with it? David Graham of The Atlantic has been thinking about this, and we invited him on to talk about it.

3:10What was your first reaction to this latest twist that the Kennedy Center may close for up to two years? It was both surprising and a little unsurprising. We've seen so many moves from Trump sort of to change the Kennedy Center and to take control of it. It's hard to be surprised by anything now. But yet to close for two years seems really dramatic. There was not a lot of warning about this. And he didn't offer a great deal of explanation. Yeah, let's just listen to a little bit more of what Trump is saying about the reasons for this announcement. This is him speaking to reporters yesterday. It's run down.

3:39It's dilapidated. It's sort of dangerous. Things fall out, fall out of ceilings. You've seen it. I mean, I've been to a lot of shows there in recent years. I can't say that's how I see the venue. Is that true in any way to you? You know, architecturally, the Kennedy Center is not for everyone, but I have never known it to be that dilapidated. And just six years ago, the center had a major expansion. And Trump hasn't provided any documentation for this, and his handpicked board hasn't given us any report on this that we could consider and take up. Does he have the power to just knock down this institution without an okay from an outside board or Congress?

4:19He doesn't have the power to knock it down. What else he might want to do is a little bit hard to say because they haven't told us what exactly he wants to do except to make it the most beautiful and the best. I don't think there's a lot of plan here, and I think that's what we're seeing. We have heard him talk about what he will do for the last few months. And as recently as this fall, he was saying, we're going to have a renovation, but we're going to be open the full time. there will be no disruption. Then he put his name on it, but I think he's seeing these things just aren't working, and he has people in charge of it who don't have experience administering an art center, which doesn't help him.

4:51As best as you can tell, what do you think his real motivations are here? Is this, I'm taking my ball and going home because everybody is canceling on the venue every name after myself? What do you think's going on? I think it's become very hard for him to run the Kennedy Center, and he had this vision that if he kind of remade it in his populist vision and stopped booking the woke performers who he said that they had had, then ticket sales would go up. And instead what's happened is he's losing staff. Most of the top officials there have left. He's losing performers. We've seen just in the last few weeks, Bela Fleck and Renee Fleming and Philip Glass pulling out of things.

5:30And he's losing audiences. The Washington Post reports huge declines in ticket sales. I think just the vision hasn't worked and he doesn't have a whole lot else up his sleeve. So closing is a way to kind of cover that up. A few weeks ago, I was driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and then I was driving down along the mall and I passed the Trump Institute for Peace. I passed the Trump Kennedy Center. I passed the Lincoln Memorial where Trump now wants to build this big triumphal arch across the river directly facing it. What do you think happens when a sitting leader imposes this kind of state control on cultural historical centers and puts himself at the center of it?

6:12I would add to that list in the Smithsonian where we see claims that, you know, exhibit text is being rewritten to de-emphasize Trump's impeachments, for example, and to take out parts of history that he thinks are negative for the U.S. You know, These are the sorts of things that we see in personalist authoritarian regimes in other countries where the head of state is singular. They have all the power. There's a little bit of a cult of personality. And he seems interested in replicating that. When we've seen Trump talking to dictators in the past, he's often admired things about them and about their countries.

6:46And now he seems to be importing that kind of practice to the U.S. as well. Let's bring it back to the Kennedy Center itself. This is an institution that opened in 1971. I mean, I know a lot of people will say that Washington is not the cultural center of the country, but in Washington, it is a big deal, and it is the National Performing Arts Center. What do you think is lost if this institution is closed for two years or more? You can just look at the example of Philip Glass pulling the symphony out. Philip Glass is one of the premier composers in this country. This is a new work, and that's a loss directly there for the White House.

7:22You know, people who live around the Washington area understand how much the Kennedy Center is an important site for performing arts of all varieties, whether it's opera or symphony or folk or jazz or, you know, various global music. It really does leave a hole in the Capitol. And if Washington is such a jewel in many ways, in museums and in arts, and to not have a premier performing arts center for two years, it's a big loss. David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks so much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Henry Larson and Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Ted Meebane.

7:57It was edited by Sarah Handel. Our executive producer is Sammy Ettingen.

8:04It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Consider This sponsor-free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Consider This Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.